Quote (Goomshill @ Apr 8 2018 11:59am)

Trump's been doing the geopolitical equivalent of crushing putin's handshake and smiling at him, hasn't he? The stuff about sanctions and airstrikes in syria gets reported, and blowing up russian citizens defending an oil field instead of scampering off is a pretty big deal, but a lot of the more potent measures aimed at russia have flown under the radar- shipping lethal arms to ukraine, sending US natural gas to the old soviet bloc to wean them off russian dependence and selling patriot missiles to poland. Trump's made it clear he doesn't want to antagonize russia and would prefer if they played nice, but seems to be straddling a line between avoiding escalating into a new cold war and still playing a hard line. I'm not sure a war of words would help that.

Quote (IceMage @ Apr 8 2018 11:28am)

So the secret formula for achieving better relations with Russia is to never criticize them publicly, but escalate tensions in other ways where Obama refused to.

I guess we'll see how that plays out.

Do you really think Trump has some long-term strategy in mind when he refuses to tweet about Putin? This is the one area where he has message discipline?

Quote (Goomshill @ Apr 8 2018 11:32am)

I think he's got a strategy, I don't know if its a good one.
He's plainly been following a playbook of taking hard action and soft diplomacy, at least up until the past month or so, and was too consistent in both regards to treat that as happenstance

Quote (EndlessSky @ Apr 8 2018 12:13pm)

Its hard to name a single country where Obama outperformed Trump in foreign policy.

Quote (Thor123422 @ Apr 8 2018 02:16pm)

China



Trump has basically rolled over to them in trying to maintain soft power. His tariffs aren't part of a coherent strategy to deal with China. They're basically just him pandering to his uninformed base to look strong.

Quote (EndlessSky @ Apr 8 2018 12:29pm)

I still don't see how this is better than Obama's nothing.

Quote (Happypuppy @ Apr 8 2018 01:47pm)

Was widowmaker still alive when trump got elected?

Quote

The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

“Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,” said Stephen Ryan, his lawyer. “I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”